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Memo Pad: Send the Check… Separate Tasks… Experience…

After Charlize Theron was sued by Raymond Weil earlier this year for allegedly violating her contract, one would have thought the Oscar-winning actress would have been cautious about jumping into another jewelry or watch deal.

SEND THE CHECK: After Charlize Theron was sued by Raymond Weil earlier this year for allegedly violating her contract by wearing another company’s timepieces in 2006, one would have thought the Oscar-winning actress would have been cautious about jumping into another jewelry or watch deal. But clearly, money talks: Theron has signed on to be the face of the jeweler Breil Milano’s latest campaign. And it appears both sides have learned a valuable lesson: Theron doesn’t even have to wear its products outside the ads, confirmed a Breil Milano spokeswoman. Theron obviously doesn’t come cheap, though: the estimated budget for the worldwide campaign for 2007 is more than 15 million euros, or $21 million. The ads, shot in Los Angeles, will be seen in the U.S., as well as Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and the U.K. — Amy Wicks

SEPARATE TASKS: Does The Newspaper Guild’s proposed new contract with Time Inc. run counter to the new world order where journalists have to write for both print and the Web? It appears it might. The two parties last week reached a tentative agreement for a three-year contract that includes guaranteed annual pay raises, and changes to severance packages and other benefits to Guild-protected employees. One of the additions is a stipulation that prevents management from demanding that print reporters must write for the Web. The magazines under Guild protection include People, Time, Fortune, Fortune Small Business, Sports Illustrated and Money.

The contract clause comes after Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer and Time managing editor Richard Stengel sent memos to their staffs this summer that said print reporters were required to write for the Web; Stengel wrote at the time that performance evaluations of every Time writer, correspondent and reporter would include Web contributions. Though most reporters these days write for both print and online, The Guild, which does not protect dot-com employees, took issue with Serwer and Stengel’s demands.

As part of a settlement between Time Inc. and The Guild on the issue, the new contract says Time Inc. will ensure Web site work will be voluntary for Guild-covered employees, and “there will no negative impact on any employee for not volunteering to do Web site work.” It also says the company will “grant Guild coverage to any Web site employee who ‘routinely or regularly’ performs ‘any work or services for any entity covered by the contract,'” and will cover magazine employees who are transferred to the Web sites. Finally, the contract says, “Time Inc. will issue a new memo that supersedes the previous two memos.”

Meaning that, if the contract is approved — which The Guild has recommended the latest version to be — Serwer and Stengel’s earlier demands would be moot, while reporters should be checking their in-boxes for updated letters from management. — Stephanie D. Smith

EXPERIENCE: Some people are enormously guarded when it comes to the identities of their exes. Not Tina Brown. At a party for her friend Julie Kavanagh’s new biography of Rudolf Nureyev on Wednesday night, Brown toasted her as a “fantastic writer,” then explained how the two really got to know each other: “We had both gone out with Martin Amis.”

“Who didn’t?” blurted out Vanity Fair managing editor Chris Garrett.

“There was a big group of us,” Kavanagh admitted later.

Others who showed up at Brown’s East Side pad to celebrate Kavanagh’s book, published this week, were fashion designer Carolina Herrera, New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick and writers Jay McInerney, Marie Brenner and Candace Bushnell. — Jacob Bernstein

ALL ABOUT KARL: Fashion week may be drawing to a close, but the Karl Lagerfeld show goes on — and on. Not only does Rodolphe Marconi’s documentary about the designer, “Karl Lagerfeld Confidentiel” hit French screens on Tuesday, but Lagerfeld will be ubiquitous on small screens, too, as guest editor in chief of the Paris Premiere TV channel from Saturday to Oct. 12. Among his selections for the week are an “actors’ studio” with Johnny Depp, musical programs featuring Claude François and Dalida and some movies, including Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” from 1919 and Andrew Niccol’s “Gattaca.” In his spare time, Lagerfeld also whipped up a 148-page supplement called “Condé Nast Atelier” that was distributed with the October issues of German Vogue, AD and Vanity Fair. German Vogue editor in chief Christian Arp said the issue had to be done during the doldrums of August. “I thought everyone is on holidays,” she confessed. Not Lagerfeld, who whipped up several shoots, including one with Claudia Schiffer on the beach at Deauville, France, and unearthed some breathtaking photos from his personal archive. He even wrote some of the captions himself, by hand. Arp said 650,000 copies of the issue were printed, each carrying 55 pages of advertising. — Miles Socha and Chantal Goupil

BUILDING BLOCKS: Could Calvin Klein’s next career be in architecture? “It’s probably the next phase,” the designer says in the fall-winter issue of Vogue Hommes International. “I’m thinking a lot about how I could get involved in that.” Asked in the six-page interview if he’s content with collections being designed in his name, he replies: “In this kind of handover, some of it is gratifying, and inevitably, some of it is disappointing….There’s no way I’m going to eat my heart out about things I don’t control anymore. Why should I suffer for what someone else does?”

Elsewhere, Klein confirmed what he told Playboy in 1984: that he slept with everybody he ever desired. “At that point in time, yes. I’m not sure I could say the same sort of thing today.” — M.S.

THANKS FOR NOTHING: Before hitting the morning news shows and the book store circuit for “Thank You Power, Making The Science of Gratitude Work for You,” Deborah Norville gave some thanks of her own at a party in her honor Tuesday night in New York. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Dan Rather, Lally Weymouth, Steve Forbes, Hilary and Wilbur Ross and Norville’s husband, Karl Wellner were among the well-wishers at Michael’s. In a telephone interview the next day, Norville said she used the occasion to applaud Rather, “as a class act from start to finish.

“When CBS hired me after my career imploded at the Today show, literally within minutes of signing my contract with CBS — I don’t think the ink was even dry — a gift basket arrived with CBS mugs, hats and pins, and a handwritten note from Dan welcoming me to the network, assuring his support and saying if there was ever anything I needed, he would be there,” she recalled.

The “Inside Edition” anchor said of her Ratherfest, “When you are able to publicly return a favor, you should take advantage of that,” adding several guests privately told her they were Rather fans, too. “It’s a big world and we all live in it together. We can do so harmoniously or be all elbows and knees. I live in New York — there are enough elbows and knees.”

Norville was also thankful for another guest, Pilar Rossi, who designed the silver cocktail suit she wore. The newly minted author showed her thanks to the “leading researchers” interviewed for the book by doing something she said she never does as a reporter — forwarding them her take on their work to assure she hadn’t misinterpreted their data. — Rosemary Feitelberg

CURSES: The New Republic tapped artist Ward Schumaker to illustrate what he described as “a wonderful article on dirty words by the erudite (and wildly coiffed) psychologist Steven Pinker.” Six sketches, including a few pictorial concepts, were sent. “I figured if The New Republic could print the words in black-and-white type, they could certainly print my very pretty and slightly baroque drawings of them,” he said via e-mail.

Not so. Reached Thursday, the magazine’s editor, Frank Foer, said he e-mailed the profanity-laden illustration to some staffers and decided to nix Schumaker’s work, not wanting to present something that was “unnecessarily antagonizing to readers.” Meanwhile, Pinker’s article “What the F***? Why We Curse” in the current edition, has a litany of eyebrow-raising curses and other offensive words. “We wanted to give the essay a chance,” explained Foer, adding he would be happy to work with the illustrator again. — R.F.

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